1. Field of the Invention
The invention is a structural panel of wood consisting of a structural post and a building board locked together by means of a groove in the plane of the board so that the structural post and the adjacent boards form a bearing whole requiring no nailing, glueing, or other form of fastening, and can be snapped together and pulled apart easily and without professional skill.
Different kinds of structural posts form different kinds of structural panels, single or double, for instance conduits, floors, panelling on external walls, ceilings, insulated walls, complete walls, partial interior walls, or walls with windows or doors.
The basic units may be glued or fastened together to form larger units, increase strength or reduce material.
The invention is designed for house construction but can also be used in model building, toy making and elsewhere.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A plane is the most common form in house construction outside as well as inside. Walls, floors and ceilings, panelling on flat surfaces, permanent and movable interiors, and even furniture, are all build up from this simple form. Its unit is called a board.
The form by itself is not sufficient, for strength is also required. The board has least strength and rigidity in the direction of the perpendicular to its plane. In that direction it is flexible and weak. Therefore a structural frame is built behind the boards and the boards fastened to it, usually by nailing but also often by glueing. This kind of structural surface has no special name, and is in fact thought of as two distinct things, as a structural frame and the covering boards. The structural frame is a bearing whole and is constructed by itself ahead of the rest, since it must, among other things, sustain the hammering involved in nailing the boards onto it.
The structural frame must be adapted to the size of the board, since under each board edge there must be a post to carry the perpendicular thrust on the board and to fasten the board into. Therefore the construction of the frame calls for fairly accurate measurement. The structural posts must not bend from the straight line of the edge, and must therefore be braced so that each post forms a straight line. The construction of the frame therefore requires professional skill, practical sense, measurement, and a considerable amount of labor.
The boards are then nailed onto the frame and all nails set, which is a time-consuming job. All nail holes must be filled and the filler left to dry properly, after which it must be sanded down. Electric wires or conduits run vertically within walls, so that holes must be drilled in the braces to thread the conduits through. Door and window frames are not automatically produced but must be made separately and fastened to the frame. The result of all this is that two thirds of the cost of a wall without door or window frames is accounted for by the labor described above, consisting for the most part in measuring, nailing, and repairing the damage associated with nailing.